Goodness, how much did I read in December??? Bet some of you thought I forgot about these, am I right?
I am finally posting this because I discuss Benitez a little bit in my next post. I figured you could read this today and get a little extra background info before that post goes up on Wednesday.
We all know the drill by now so let's just jump right into it.
Tim
*Champions League Dreams by Rafa Benitez (12/27)
Benitez, manager of Liverpool Football Club from 2004 until 2010, guides the reader through his six seasons in charge of the English giant. His focus is on the club's participation in Europe's top club competition, the UEFA Champions League. Intertwined with his tactical breakdowns are accounts of the club's domestic performance, transfer dealings, and disarray caused by a takeover from foreign (American) ownership in his final years as manager.
Sports books written by players and coaches tend to produce a lot of rubbish. No surprise there- who would have time to develop writing skills while also participating in professional sports? But I suspected that Benitez might do well given his brief stint as a columnist during one of his sabbaticals from management. My instincts proved sound with every page I savored of this excellent book.
As expected, each tactical breakdown fascinated in its own way. Some of his notes are simple (such as the observation that teams prefer to press along the sidelines due to the pressured player having one less direction in which to pass). He also details his basic yet decisive penalty kick research prior to shootout wins over AC Milan and Chelsea. He did not consider his tireless preparation complete until he established contingency plans for situations where his team took the lead, fell behind, or saw
Other notes are subtler, such as his observation that each solution in a game creates a new problem. In one example, he describes the chain reaction after a left back steps out to meet an opposing winger. First, the closest center back or the deepest central midfielder must drop in and cover the vacated left back space. Then, because the player who stepped in must have vacated his own space, a third defender must account for this opening before an opponent can step in and exploit it. Benitez resolved these impossible puzzles by prioritizing the openings to cede to opponents rather than try to ask his players to exhaust themselves by covering every blade of grass on the pitch. This ability to ignore trivial problems set Benitez apart from his contemporaries.
I found most rewarding the descriptions of his management techniques. Benitez considered it vital to balance the mood of his squad with his team talks. Thus, a team too confident prior to a match would be treated to an in-depth discussion of the opponent's strengths. However, a tense team would quickly learn about the opponent's every weakness. In acquiring players, he targeted those with position versatility because he knew over the course of a season that he would use a variety of strategies to counteract opponents.
One up: Benitez exemplifies an ideal I used to lean on in my days as a hiring manager- clear writing is a strong indicator of clear thinking. This book is superb in its clarity of explanation and reinforces the feeling of many associated with the club during his tenure- when it came to the task of analyzing an opponent and preparing the perfect plan, there were few managers preferred to Benitez.
One down: I loved this book but I cannot say with any certainty that someone with little interest in the sport will find this readable. It lacks the expansive life perspective of Ken Dryden's The Game and it does not guide the reader in the way Jonathan Wilson's Inverting The Pyramid does to make the tactical discussions friendly for the casual observer.
Just saying: I started following top-flight European football in the winter of 2006. Sitting around at home with nothing to do in the fortnight after the end of my high school basketball career, I came across a replay of an English Premier League game one night and got hooked over a series of late night viewings.
The games and seasons covered by this book overlap almost exactly with my start as a Liverpool supporter. So, in addition to enjoying the tactical analysis and the detailed look at a manager's thought process, there was also an undeniable nostalgia in simply reliving some of the great matches from those early days as I read this book.
*Belichick and Brady by Michael Holley (12/30)
This book, somewhat contrary to the expectations set by the title, was more about the New England Patriots in general than it was a focused study of the head coach and his quarterback. Since the starting point of the book was Bill Belichick's hiring as head coach, though, we readers were still treated to a healthy dose of the two men.
Of the two, it is the coach that generally occupied the narrative's focus. This was perhaps logical. Belichick, after all, still decides if Brady will play or if he will sit. Such a focus, though, did drive much of the book off the field and into the meeting rooms or offices where the coach deliberates, analyzes, and finalizes his strategy.
My favorite parts of this book were about the coach's team building philosophies. Belichick's ideal coaching hire was a young assistant to teach and promote. He encouraged his coaches to withhold a decision until they were finished gathering the required information but, once fully prepared, to be thorough, clear, and decisive in making determinations.
This process applied to player evaluations as well. For each position on the team, Belichick and his staff wrote out a full description of the ideal player. They then gathered as much information as possible about the player before making a decisive determination. Though economics prevented his staff from always signing the perfect fit, it fully prepared them to recognize the real thing.
The coaches processed a staggering amount of information prior to each game. However, transferring all of it to the players was unreasonable lest they overload their team with too much information. Thus, game plans were limited to just two or three heavily emphasized ideas. Any more information and the player's ability to concentrate fully would be challenged. Like with Benitez, Belichick set himself apart from his rivals by understanding how to prioritize problems rather than exhaust his resources by trying to solve them all at once.
The book's wider focus brought occasional commentary about Belichick from others in the football world. One observer noted that players on the downside of their careers generally got a lot of attention from the fans and the media. He saw it as the coach's job to ease them out of the organization, generally by slowly transferring responsibilities to a younger, rapidly improving player. This observer thought Belichick did an outstanding job at this task.
Not all of these observations were compliments. One significant league executive noted that leading an organization through multiples phases required understanding the feelings, loyalties, and relationships that people have with each other. This comment's positioning within the book implied that Belichick lacked this capability early on in his career.
One up: My freshman football coach once said that football games are determined by just a few plays. The reason why players must go all-out on each play is because no one knows if a given play will be among those crucial few until the play is over.
This book reminded me of that quote. It is surprisingly insightful given what seems its intention to cover as much as possible without digging too deep into any one moment from this period. But, these insights would come out of nowhere, causing me to scurry for a pen while reinforcing my desire to keep reading.
One down: If you are not a New England Patriots fan, I would suggest skipping this one. The book is a classic 'mile wide, inch deep' type of read. A Patriots fan can do a lot with that inch.
Another way to put it- I would not read this book if it were written about any other NFL team (and especially those pathetic Buffalo Bills).
Just saying: Reading this book after Benitez's work led me to consider way I watch sports today and compare it to what I enjoyed in the past. These days, I enjoy digging into the on-field strategy while keeping an eye on the team building aspects. This is a big shift from the past when I basically just would Root, Root, Root for the Home Team and dig into the sensational story lines produced by the national media hype machine.
I could oversimplify it and say that I prefer to think about process rather than results, a disease no doubt transmitted to me by that bestselling vector known as Moneyball!
